


The scars silence carves

by Soulreciever



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Mild Angst, Mild Language, Mixed characterisation, Pining, no beta we saunter vaguely downward like crowley, taking cannon and going for a wild explorative ride, tv cannon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22199206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soulreciever/pseuds/Soulreciever
Summary: The wrong choice of words, just an inch too much enthusiasm and the easy, comfortable, banter they’d built together would be shattered
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Kudos: 16





	The scars silence carves

**Author's Note:**

> This whole thing somewhat got away from me and somehow it shows, also though this is set in TV verse I’ve sprinkled a bit of self theorising and somehow bookverse things have likely snuck in along with! 
> 
> Footnotes in the endnotes and I had enough fun with them that, unless someone has tiny coding for the task, I can not hyperlink without going over the note word limit (which I have just learned is a thing). 
> 
> Also, yes, I did somehow fudge when the Arrangement officially came into being, blame my slippy memory. 
> 
> Title stolen from Lyrics in the amazing Gravity by Vienna Teng.

Tempting had, at some point right at the very, very, start, been more fun than work. Early humanity had, after all, been pretty lax in the imagination department and the worst his quiet whispers might achieve was a little light coveting of a neighbours ox.

Once they’d really gotten their teeth into the going forth and prospering lark they’d stopped needing any sort of real prodding and started developing a whole slew of sins to feel guilty over when they happened. 

Course given that Hell never double checked reports (1) he’d pretty much instantly decided that he could 100% just carry on claiming responsibility anyway and maybe have a go at that sleeping thing Humans made look so fun. 

There’d been a good two seconds of smug, demonic, joy at that particular notion before his internal voice(3) had jumped in on questioning. 

Because, ok, yeh, he’d always been a bit lazy and, honestly, you couldn’t really go griping about the stuff Humanity was doing with their free will when you’d given it to them in the first place. But, let’s be honest, a good demon (4) probably should’ve been actively encouring the murdering and even making helpful suggestions as to how to make said murdering even more efficient.

So why wasn’t he?

Or rather, perhaps more aptly, why was he suddenly very, very, aware of just what a certain Angleic someone’s opinion might be on said encouring and why in Satan’s name should it matter at all?

Because, aparently, he was the sort of stupid demon who’s first thought upon hearing that their Angelic advasary had given up his one and only weapon was not, “great, let’s smite the bugger before he can cause any trouble,” but rather “oh no, he’s hot.” 

That’s not to say thinking someone was attractive was Forbidden(6) and, well, Angels were meant to be Perfection Incarnate(7) so it’s not like he’d be the first Demon with his head turned by The Enemy. 

No the stupid thing had been that all it’d taken was that one tiny, tiny, show that maybe the Angel was also on Humanity's side and he’d gone and contracted Feelings.

Now to better understand how this is possible given that Crowley is, undeniably, a demon and thus, supposedly, on about the same Empathic and Emotive scale as a Sociopath, it would help to scale the matter of Heaven and Hell down to something a little more humanly comprehendable. 

PR on the part of both parties will mean an instant temptation to think of Big Businesses pitted against one another in the trade war to end all trade wars. In truth, however, it is better to think of them as a bunch of four year olds in a long standing gang war because, as any parent will tell you, no one holds a grudge longer than a toddler.

In other words, the only reason anyone believes Demons can’t Feel is because they’d told them so and, in true toddler vein, the only reason they’d done that was because Heaven was all about Feelings and they were naff so, of course, Feelings were naff too.

Unfortunately this was where the comparison runs out because, unlike toddlers, Hell wasnt about to punish a slight of Club Rules with simple ostracisation or mild teasing.

Hell had, after all, made torture it’s lives work and even small misdemeanours had urned even high ranking Demons a good dip in the sulphur lakes. 

Lucipher knows what breaking a Big Rule might warrant. 

So, that first time, terrified at even the hint of Feelings his brain instantly bullshits itself into believing it’s just getting used to how the strange, strange, neural network of his corporation works and then rather forcefully suggest that, maybe, it might be good to gets as far from the Angel as fast as he can.

The world is suspiciously large beyond Eden’s walls(8) and outside of a short conversation at the foot the Arc,(9) he actually has quite an easy time of achieving just that goal. Then Aziraphale finds him in Rome, nievely asks him to come try an aphrodisiac in a notorious orgy house and, as proves typical of the Angel the next few millena, altogether bulldozers through all his hard built plans. 

Still he’s nothing if not stubborn and for a while he manages, somehow, to convince himself that he’s simply Lusting after the Angel, that Rome and Constantinople and the many countless meetings since had all been part of a long game temptation (10).

He will, even under the threat of the worst torture imaginable(12)swear blind that the eventual collapse of that particular bastion of denial was not actually his fault and that, actually, if certain Florentine painters had just kept their beaky noses out, he would have been just fine, thanks. 

Because if not for Leonardo they would never have spent that long summer in Milan working parallel to one another rather than against and if not for that summer he would never have known what it was to have the Angel look at him with genuine trust those blue, blue, eyes.

There is no denying the want that blossoms in him that look, no rationalising away the shear yawning ache there his very soul when, eventually, his orders tear them apart again and, the instant that he’d been able, he’d had a long chat with himself about what the fuck he was meant to do now.

About five minutes into what, let’s been honest, was basically the slowest mental breakdown in existence, he’d given up pretending he was in any way coping and gone and gotten alcohol.

He’d woken up two weeks later somewhere in the middle of the Arabian sea clutching to a piece of paper filled with a mix of terrible, terrible poetry, a long, rambling, diatride the evil of the mongoose(13) and, amid what, the little he’d ever been able to decipher, seemed to be some form of resignation, two powerful, powerful, words.

**Our side**

He’d known it utter madness even painfully, painfully, hung over and yet even at that point he’d recognised the frivolity of fighting the yearning now he’d not only recognised it but also named it.

Also, aparently, time had erased a great deal of the terror of discovery, indeed, the annoyingly cocky, over confident, part of him was yelling that, hey, if he was getting a fun tour of all nine circles of Hell, he might as well earn the ‘privilege’ 

In for a penny, in for a pound and all that jazz. 

Actually getting to putting any of that confidence anywhere productive takes longer than he’d have liked, not only because, pretty predictably, said confidence flees the moment he actually commits, but also, shamefully, because he wants to make sure he’s not just going to frighten the Angel off.

He has, after all, been lucky enough to get in on the pining lark right at the beginning when the Angel had still been fine tuning his powers and thus had already been written off with the rest of the ‘background noise’ by the time that a)the Angel had gotten his stride and b)said pinining had become desperate yearning.

The wrong choice of words, just an inch too much enthusiasm and the easy, comfortable, banter they’d built together would be shattered the desperate tiptoe (14) around Feelings that would never be requited.

Loving something in the vague, angelic, sense was not, after all, the same as Loving it the human way and not even he’d been stupid enough to indulge the fantasy that there was anything but column a involved in the Angel’s interactions with him. 

When, the liberal application of causual wording, the implication that, maybe, this was all temptation and the obvious demonic influencing of a coin toss, the Arangement had come in to being he’d sort of hoped that’d be a good bit of closure.

That knowing he could see the Angel at least weekly to not only talk about work, but also simply just to talk, would be just enough to at least make the yearning bearable again. 

What it does, instead, is spoil him, gets him so, so, certain the Angel’s cooperation that he starts making risky demands, pushes and pushes until, inevitably, Aziraphale snaps back.

He lets the Angel have a bit of space, works and works on just how he can undo what feels an irreversible mistake, until he gives in the shear bone weary exhaustion the task and sleeps.

When wakes it’s the 20th century and yet if not for the date the top a swiftly procured paper, as well the tell tell shift fashions ever fickle whim, he’d have believed it only the next day. 

That his limbs feel only mildly clumsy, that his mind feels refereshed rather than stagnated, that, strangest of all, his truest essence is embedded, here and there, golden, tingling, flecks of Holiness, speak only of one thing and yet...

He lets the hope sit one sharp, sharp, minute before shutting it deep, deep, inside, a caution justified only a handful of years later an indescribable weight blue, blue, eyes and a remark his driving that‘s as much a typically Aziraphale way to put some distance back between them as it is a repeat the same old greavences. 

With the hope well and truly smothered he is able to be realistic the request, to tell himself that it comes fear the Angel’s part that he’s being manipulated, that had his Feelings been found out there certainly wouldn’t have been an offer lunch together some indefinite future.

Allows him to retain some molecule of sanity after his stupid panic mouth suggests raising the honest to Satan antichrist with the Angel which, in turn, means he’s able to take the Angel actually agreeing as the typically soft hearted, passifistic, choice it actually is rather than reading things into it. 

Every single one of the next eleven years is started a strong, strong, reminder that the Angel regards this whole affair as little more than another business interaction, that letting himself get comfortable once had cost him a little the Angel's trust and, finally, that the last they’d spent this much time together he’d been lying to himself the truth of his Feelings. 

The reminders, along shear force of will, get him through to the day of Warlock’s party without stupidity and retaining a happy status quo the Angel.

It all goes, quite literally, to Hell in a handbasket the very instant he realises that they’ve gotten the wrong boy and, in the ensuing panic that revelation, lies to head office about the fact.

The moment they realise they’ll ask questions and from there it’s only a matter of time before they realise a) that he’s been colluding with the enemy and b)he’s desperately in Love with said enemy.

By the time the Angel suggests he’s kind he’s already right at peak stress and snaps without thinking, spits and roars at him as though he is any other demon dealing with any other angel.

What lingers, more than the feel of the Angel there beneath him, more than the heady taste his natural scent there beneath the spice and sweetness of the barbers craft, is that he doesn’t fight back.

That he goes limp and simply lets himself be pushed, seems even, perhaps, to be tempted a moment to twist the entire encounter into precisely what it gets mistaken for in the end. 

To all but bare throat when he’s quite literal breath from manifesting fangs speaks, so much more eloquently than any of the Angel’s pretty words, just where the other truly stands.

Screams, loud enough to be deafening, that he does, in fact, trust almost as much as he is trusted.

Tells that, just maybe, the Angel has been playing his own sort of con game, twisting and posing lies just the right sort of light so as to make them seem truths.

The why of that kindles the memory of angelic fingerprints against his soul and flips the lid open his hope just swift enough that he can not quite catch it.

Can not quite stop before he’s thrown all but one metaphorical card onto the table in front of the Angel and is met the familiar stock ‘we are from two different worlds and, therefore what you are asking of me is an imposibilty’ response.

It’d hurt even though he’d expected it and, shamefully, he’d balled up against that pain, pretended as though it’s nothing and then, because at that point he’d aparently decided there was nothing to loose, publicly propositioned the Angel where anyone might hear.

The Angel sends him away, Hastur and Ligur come calling and then, oh then, the bookshop burns down.

Instantly he can think only that it’s fault, that if he’d let the Angel be after the conversation at the bandstand the Arangement would still be secret and the Angel would still be whole and well.

He finds a pub, throws the bartender enough money to likely buy the place twice over and then just mentally checks out for a bit. 

It’s why it takes a moment to actually register the Angel when he does come back, why he says something a little stupid (15) and actually gets more than a little choked up before, reliably, the Angel's steadfastly prim attitude instills a much needed dose of sobriety. 

Things become somewhat of a whirlwind then what with the Bentley blowing up, averting the literal Apocalypse, the Angel making somewhat interesting threats and facing down Lucifer himself. 

Which means he doesn’t get processing time for, well, for any of it really and 100% he’s usuing that fact as an excuse for making the stupid choice to invite the Angel back to the flat rather than just reminding him about the bookshop and letting him organise a hotel room. 

Not that it feels like a mistake while the Angel’s using the journey to test a theory he’s gotten about Agnes’s prophecy or, indeed, in the silence that comes once he’s satisfied the results, indeed, squashed as he is, oh so gently, against the warm plush length the Angel’s thigh he feels rather as though he’s finally made the right choice.

Weirdly it doesn’t even feel like a mistake once the Angel’s there in the flat, his cosy, old fashioned, aesthetic and predictably soft response at sight the plants, so jarringly, jarringly, different.

No it’s only once he’s drained his reserves further a smattering or books for the Angel to find throughout the course of the night and retreated, all though briefly, the scorching heat a much needed shower, that his mind starts to catch up with him. 

He’s mentally and physically exhausted in a way he’s never quite felt before and with the Angel so very, very, close, as well as the visceral memory the fire there the forefront his mind, the wrong words feel but breath away.

Thing is that for all that loosing the Angel makes him very, very, scared the consequences of such a slip and curse his stupid, stupid, tongue(16), it’s also made him desperate to keep him as close as he might.

To shift, silent, his serpents form, coil a loose, intricate, spiral about the Angel’s limbs and guard him as though brooding mother wrapped about a clutch of eggs.

That is, given both the warmth of the shower and exhaustion so intense it’s even seeped his true self, a comparison that proves pretty ill thought as, the moment it hits his hind brain, his corporation decides that, hey, yeh, being a snake would be awesome right about now. 

He attempts to shift back, is met what feels, impossibly, like an all over body cramp, gives that up for a lost cause and instead focuses the somewhat time consuming task of switching his shower back off now that a) he is limbless b) he’s apparently tapped out on the miracle front for a bit and finally c) the shower controls are very small, very wet, circles of highly polished metal.

He does, eventually, manage to get just enough purchase the very tip his tail to gain victory the indevour and, unable to find further absorbative distraction, he makes his way back out to the Angel. 

Predictably the Angel has not only found out the books but miracled himself a plush looking wingback(17) from which to read them and a very soft throw rug(18) to furl about his knees while doing as such.

He has also, aparently, taken time in his absence to remove and carefully store away his top most layers.

For a moment he lingers the very edge of the room, transfixed not only with how very right the Angel looks in a space that, until now, had been exclusively his, but also how very, very, vulnerable he looks stripped down to light blue cotton and the light leather straps of his suspenders.

Another ripple of cramped discomfort as his corporation attempts, entirely without input on his part, to manifest hands so as to grasp that vulnerability, press it tight the sensitive whorles, loops and arches of his fingertips to set as evidence against the sure, sure, sensation that he has, somehow, set to dreaming.

More than once he has witnessed just what it takes to rouse the Angel once he is so very absorbed, had, infact, once very drunkenly joked that he could probably get the Angel to miss the Rapture itself if he found just the right book and yet he has only to flinch (20) just ever so slightly for that Divine, Divine, gaze to fall upon him.

Confusion bleeds swift to concern mixed just enough a hint of hurt that he’s swiftly curling upright and, as much casual dismissal as he can manage, remarking,

“Sorry about this, angel, but it seems as though being human is a bit too much like hard work for the old corporation right now.”

“Ah, well, no need to stay up on my account, dear boy, I’m quite comfortable here with the books you’ve so thoughtfully supplied and I’m not so very certain tomorrow’s plan will work with you ‘au natural’ as it were.”

It’s about as tempting to push at that ‘au natural’ as it is to take the out, let the status quo settle back in now that most of the chaos is out of the way and take tomorrow as it comes but...

...but somehow, impossibly, he can still taste smoke in the air, can most certainly taste the puddled remanence of Ligur the next room over and, honestly, he’s had just about enough right now of fighting. 

Fixing his attention the tuck and pull of the Angel’s shirt at the edges of the braces he sucks in an entirely unneeded breath and enquires,

“Do you think I might stay with you while I sleep Angel?”

A soft, soft noise and the fabric bunches all the further as the Angel taps at one shoulder a clear, clear, invitation.

So, so, slowly he edges his way across the room, takes time to register how very, very, warm the Angel, how his body twisted ever so slightly into the spiral of his coils and, perhaps most important of all, the peaceful, peaceful, beating of his heart.

Body heavy the same sort of headonistic warmth one might experience after the eating of an indulgent meal he settles, finally, across the Angel’s broad shoulders and, before he can quite think better of the choice, crooks his face up against his cheek a soft, soft, approximation of a kiss.

He feels the radiance of the Angel’s smile, the soft press his fingers once against the back of his head and then his body gives, at last, to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> (1) Something he’d always found pretty weird given how suspicious his lot were by their very nature, but, well, gift Bentley’s and grills(2) and all that jazz.
> 
> (2) There would, eventually, be a long wine soaked rant to the Angel about the stupidity of the original phrase. For a start horses were pricks eager to discorperate a chap shaped being just because he smelt like snake so why would you give them as a gift in the first place. Also, and this had been his best point, surely looking a certain wooden gift horse in the mouth would have saved a whole lot of mess back in Troy.
> 
> (3) For centuries said voice had sounded an awful lot like Her before, inexplicably, it’d shifted to a much more masculine, dare one say anglic, voice. He can still remember how Sigmund’s eyes had lit up upon casually mentioning said transition late one drinking session and how hard it’d been to get him distracted before the other had started on the psychoanalysis. 
> 
> (4) An oxymoron, sure, but he’d never been a fan of using words like “wicked” or “bad” in a positive slant even before the 90’s had made it naff (5).
> 
> (5) That’s not to say he’d never done it, more that he’d picked his moments. The Angel always made such an entertaining face whenever words were used for something other than their intended purpose, after all. 
> 
> (6) Lust was one of those emotion that it helped to understand, especially given how close it was to other Feelings. 
> 
> (7) Before the Fall the assumption had been that Angelic Perfection was Her Divine Love seeping through, no one was looking at that many eyes with fluffy feelings without a bit of magic, after all. After, when it’d become clear that a) they, as Demons, could still look directly at angels without their eyeballs burning away and that b) some humans would love anything, they’d written it off as Ineffable.
> 
> (8) There was boredom and then there was creating whole entire diversive environments with mountains and rivers and entire creatures to exist in said environments. He’d felt smug about how this likely proved his point that God had intended to kick mankind out of Eden the entire time and then he’d started thinking about how that probably did mean he’d done the Right Thing and he’d gone and gotten good and drunk.
> 
> (9) In hindsight he should have read more into the choice to even talk to the Angel rather than continuing on with his plan to sneak onto the Arc in serpent form, but, you know, denial.
> 
> (10) A feet achieved by strength of Will and completely ignoring the fact that a)the thought of talking the Angel into something he didn’t secretly want to do anyway makes him ill and b)he’d put actual effort into getting as many layers between him and the Angel's bare skin as possible.(11)
> 
> (11) Honestly, he hadn’t cottoned on to the fact that that was what he’d been doing until somewhere in the middle of the 18th century, when, upon seeing the Angel in trousers for the very first time, he’d experienced both a sense of genuine self satisfaction and one of complete and utter relief.
> 
> (12) Something that, when putting the shear scale of Demonic Imagination into concideration, is saying quite a bit. 
> 
> (13) Rationally he knew he could totally eat any mongoose that even dared look at him funny but, well, as any arachnophobe will tell you, rationality never really came into this sort of thing.
> 
> (14) That the Angel would, indeed, choose to tiptoe around the entire thing rather than walk away had always been a given. Aziraphale had, after all, always been impossibly British and thus all but hardwired to pretend as though everything was just tickity boo despite any evidence to the contrary. 
> 
> (15) It says much to his own self conditioning that is IS only a slightly stupid thing and not out and out confession. 
> 
> (16) It was thankful that he had pretty much tapped himself dry as he does as such enough conviction that, fully powered, he might actually have a) been taken seriously and b) had to fill in a whole heap of paperwork to undo whatever harm wrought that fact. 
> 
> (17) Upholstered, shockingly, in a rather tasteful slate grey that complimented the flats aesthetic marvously.
> 
> (18) Which is, because one can not have everything, a very garish mustard tartan and yet, paradoxically (19), it also somehow manages to suit the flat. 
> 
> (19) One might even say, ineffably. 
> 
> (20) Flinch is, infact, probably too strong a word for what, given his mass at the moment, likely translated out as little more than an oddly timed unudulation of his coils, but he was a) still working on human scales and b) very, very, tired so was allowed a little dramatic license.


End file.
